Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio is Austin-based singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves who joins us in interview and performance. A recording artist and full-time touring musician, Cleaves spins stories with a novelist’s eye and a poet’s heart. Called "one of the finest songwriters from Texas" by The New York Times, Slaid was a winner of the prestigious New Folk competition at the Kerrville Folk Festival, an award previously given to such artists as Nanci Griffith, Robert Earl Keen, and Steve Earle, and his album Broke Down was a hit on the Americana charts. Slaid Cleaves was born in Washington, D.C., was raised in Maine, and attended Tufts University where he majored in English and philosophy.

Slaid's latest album, Still Fighting the War, is a collection of songs -- both cinematic and carefully chiseled – that has garnered kudos from returning vets and their families. (“Men go off to war for a hundred reasons/ But they all come back with the same demons.”) He does an annual Thanksgiving eve show at Austin’s Saxon Pub and Slaid, who counts Woody Guthrie as a primary inspiration, will be featured in Jimmy LaFave’s “Walking Woody’s Road” – along with LaFave, Eliza Gilkyson, and Sam Baker – at Austin’s One World Theatre in January.

Host and Producer of Rag Radio: Thorne Dreyer; Engineer and Co-Producer: Tracey Schulz. Rag Radio (koop.org/ragradio) is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer, cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog (theragblog.blogspot.com) and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The show is broadcast (and streamed) live Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast and streamed on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., Sundays at 10 a.m. (Eastern time) and on Houston Pacifica's KPFT HD-3 90.1 on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. (Central). Contact: ragradio@koop.org. Running time: 54:45.

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